Some Adventures & Mini Trials

During my silence I have also been working on some miniatures for a dolls house that is in pieces at the moment.

Now our mini tenant moved into our house in February last year and I have been terrible at renovating their manor. It was a real fix-upper on closer inspection so it got demolished and is being rebuilt.

In the meantime I arranged to have a... town house? Shop extension? *shrugs* Added to give our poor tenant and her pets somewhere to live in the meantime (and give me a project that doesn't make me want to cry). Here is a slightly dodgy photo of her room at the moment.

Her bedroom floor will be laid I hope by next week (or started).

She has her Robbin Hobb books on the chair, cookies in the tin and some knitting at the foot of the bed (plus the wrapping paper she forgot to put away).

She really does need to change her calender and open her Christmas present though!

Below the cut are some other things I have been working on, including some closer looks at a few items.

~Ishy

Gothic Rug by Natalia Frank (Pt. 3)

Silk gauze... It is a bit of a love hate relationship *wry smile*. When it works, it is great, when you need to unpick anything it is a living nightmare.

There has been more work done on it, but it was paused due to the fact I ran out of black. This is why when you buy a kit, and they say to use one strand, you don't use two.

 

This is what it looks like now. All the colours/outlining is done... It just needs to be infilled. But of course I have other running projects.

I now have two wedding presents to do. So this baby gets put off again.

Please cluck on the 'rug' label if you would like to see the other two posts.

~Ishy

Gothic Rug by Natalia Frank (Pt. 2)

Well... A lot more work has been done on the rug since I last posted but still not finished *looks sheepish* I have.... Messed it up a couple of times that has lead to some pain staking unpicking. On normal fabric this isn't good... 

On silk gauze? Nightmare of trying not to break it an undo such tiny stitches.

Gothic Rug by Natalia Frank

This was what pattern made me HAVE to attempt miniature embroidery.

Pattern from Natalia's Fine Needlework blog

I was very pleased upon poking around Natalia's site to find she was selling patterns/kits for it. Internal head monolog was just "!!!!!!" lol

It just appeals to every part of me. It probably says something that when I showed my mother she just said "Of course. I would worry if not even that pattern could convince you" *sheepish*

After trying the pillow (harder size gauze, but easier for it would be less torturous to finish if I couldn't handle the detail) I realised it wasn't as worrying as I had feared.

My biggest down fall is still counting. Do you know how hard these are to unpick?! I have been learning the hard way.... I tell you when it takes four times longer to unpick, you get more careful very fast.

Biggest advantage to the pillow is that the rug is on 40ct vs pillow on 49ct. It significantly easier to unpick, but not much easier to count still. Especially on the train.

A Trial in Miniature

 I have been ogling miniature embroidery for several years now. The hardest thing about starting it was finding the silk gauze to do it on.

None of the standard sewing shops (in Australia at least) seem to have it, even most of the specialised ones have never seen or stocked *sighs*

I had found a copy of "Celtic, Medieval and Tudor Wall Hangings in 1/12 Scale Needlepoint" by Sandra Whitehead on sale in Lindcraft a while ago and fell in love with the Celtic Knot hanging.

Alas, when I started to do the yellow in the middle I realised I had miscounted one direction by a stitch. If you look in the fourth photo there is an unfinished outer row? I thought I had messed up and stopped doing it. I would just do a 3rd row around the outside when done.... *facepalm* No... That WAS the correct number.

The knot was very snug and and no wiggle room. I could figure no way of editing that row out so I scrapped the knot and looked for another mini design for the middle.

And so you have the bee pillow:

Done in DMC cotton on 49ct silk gauze.
Final pillow size made up is roughly 1¼ inches or about 3cm

• Silk gauze from Dollhouse Needlepoint Patterns & Kits (was from owner's Etsy store which has now closed). I will be posting her Gothic rug and doing at least another one or two of her other kits/patterns.

• Pattern base from "Celtic, Medieval and Tudor Wall Hangings in 1/12 Scale Needlepoint" by Sandra Whitehead

• Bee was from http://beeskneesactivities.com/html/downloads/embroidery/embroidery.html 

Click 'Read More' for other WIP's!

~Ishy

A Slightly Foolish Attempt

I found some lace weight cotton and crochet hooks for an amazing price and decided to have a play.

I have only ever done one other crochet project and I think I may try a bit more full size before I play again.

That tiny little bit was several restarts, pick up of dropped stitches and what not. It took me most of 2hrs!

~Ishy